I picked it up on pre order for £22 and i feel its a good game but just now its plagued with lag! Hopefully once some more people get it and they get the servers or whatever is causing these issues sorted, it should be alot of fun.

I think this review missed a lot of bad in this game (like half of the maps being spawncamping heaven). But the resulting game is kinda fun. Not worth full price though.

The review also missed the ball on a hell of alot of great points....

Body types massively change your play style and they affect the weapon load-out that you can have. Lights cannot carry miniguns and are restricted to long rifles, smg's and pistols.

The maps are not exactly what I would call cluttered, but rather opportunistic. They are anything but linear. If your team is locked down in your spawn... you need to pay attention to the fact that there is more than one way out. The only one where this is not truely the case is on Container City. If the attacking team doesn't know what they are doing they are doomed.

Everything in the game is exceptionally balanced with almost nothing being overpowered and whilst alot of the weapons are distinctly similar in 'stats', their handling varies greatly.

Teamwork is the focus of the game and the amount of times I have seen pubbers running around like it is a fragfest is beyond belief. People seem to forget that there is an objective, or multiple on each and every single map and section therein. Kills don't count diddly towards the game overall, sure they get you xp, but only 30 or so per kill, giving someone ammo nets you 75.

The challenges are a vital intro to the game, regardless of how much gaming experience you have, as they introduce you to all the mechanics that are in the game itself. From the class-specific objectives, the SMART system, defensive mechanics around objective and escort mechanics. Yes, they should be labelled 'tutorials' rather than challenges, but that's a small matter.

The HUD can have a huge amount of information on it at any one time if you are off at the distance and looking towards your team and it gives you all the names of each and every player on your team, but the semi-transparency of the labels helps in that after about an hour, you won't notice them unless you're looking for information on what is going on.

No, the game is not perfect. The initial launch had a myriad of bugs and errors, but these were largely resolved on day 1 with a 19.9MB patch! Compare that to 2GB patches and fixes for some other titles released in the last while.

While it is not polished to a glaring sheen that blinds the eye and melts the brain, the way the game works once you get it through your skull that it is NOT A FRAGFEST and you actually support your team towards the completion of an objective is absolutely brilliant.

It sounds so much like ET: quakewars in many ways. Great in some ways but flawed in ways that can really spoil the fun. Also the entry bar sounds very high for the less experienced in FPS in a similar way to ET:QW. I enjoyed ETQW, but it was soon obvious it was turning people off in droves and would never have much of a community apart from the hardcore. Essentially this game sounds to me like that game with new player models and maps, minus the vehicles and minus the strogg! Should have called it ET: team war!

Well, since it's by Splash Damage they've carried over alot of the mechanics from ET:QW naturally, but refined alot of it as well.
For those that feel out of their debt initially, there is always the objective wheel to give you direction and highlighting what you need to do, so it makes it alot easier than following the hoarde of headless chickens.

Great review Paul, cheers. I was a bit on the fence with this game, don't think I'll bother now. If I do, it will have to be on a Steam sale I reckon...

As far as I know Valve have dropped BRINK. Steam members have been posting on steam forum asking where brink is? Some of the posts are deleted they report and Valve won't respond. They have dropped the game big-time.

I'm sorry, doesn't anyone else have an issue with this scenario?
- Great floating city puddling around the ocean.
- Large numbers of refugees are arriving on(?)/transported to(?) said floating city.
- Refugees now can't leave because this will reveal the location of city.

Wha...? You mean no one else has noticed this great floating city? A giant, honking city. In the middle of the ocean. Being all...floaty? No one?
Well, apparently it is a secret massive floating city! Made of stealth materials. And fitted with a Romulan cloaking device.

Furthermore, the refugees came to the Ark for a reason (fleeing environmental destruction and related social chaos) but now the refugees want to leave and go back? To where they ran away from in the first place?
So a crowded, floating city isn't better than struggling with everyone ashore for the dwindling number of earthly dry patches? Good to know, now I won't make that mistake in the forthcoming environmental apocalypse.

Maybe there are sound story points not revealed here that makes sense of this scenario , but I'm thinking narrative development wasn't high on the list of developer priorities. It would ruin a game for me.